Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2019 Mar 24;9(3):33.
doi: 10.3390/bs9030033.

Not All Bilinguals Are the Same: A Call for More Detailed Assessments and Descriptions of Bilingual Experiences

Angela de Bruin  1
Affiliations
Review

Not All Bilinguals Are the Same: A Call for More Detailed Assessments and Descriptions of Bilingual Experiences

Angela de Bruin. Behav Sci (Basel). .

Abstract

No two bilinguals are the same. Differences in bilingual experiences can affect language-related processes but have also been proposed to modulate executive functioning. Recently, there has been an increased interest in studying individual differences between bilinguals, for example in terms of their age of acquisition, language proficiency, use, and switching. However, and despite the importance of this individual variation, studies often do not provide detailed assessments of their bilingual participants. This review first discusses several aspects of bilingualism that have been studied in relation to executive functioning. Next, I review different questionnaires and objective measurements that have been proposed to better define bilingual experiences. In order to better understand (effects of) bilingualism within and across studies, it is crucial to carefully examine and describe not only a bilingual's proficiency and age of acquisition, but also their language use and switching as well as the different interactional contexts in which they use their languages.

Keywords: bilingual experiences; bilingualism; executive functioning; interactional contexts; language proficiency; language switching; language use.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bialystok E., Craik F.I., Klein R., Viswanathan M. Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychol. Aging. 2004;19:290–303. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.290. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Costa A., Hernández M., Costa-Faidella J., Sebastián-Gallés N. On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don’t. Cognition. 2009;113:135–149. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.08.001. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Prior A., MacWhinney B. A bilingual advantage in task switching. Biling. Lang. Cogn. 2010;13:253–262. doi: 10.1017/S1366728909990526. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Paap K.R., Greenberg Z.I. There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cogn. Psychol. 2013;66:232–258. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2012.12.002. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lehtonen M., Soveri A., Laine A., Järvenpää J., de Bruin A., Antfolk J. Is bilingualism associated with enhanced executive functioning in adults? A meta-analytic review. Psychol. Bull. 2018;144:394–425. doi: 10.1037/bul0000142. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources